1: Ginny's Tale

(Author's Note: Traditionally I write my girlfriend a story for Valentine's Day each year. This was the offering for 2005.)

Well, it's finally here. The 'Wedding of the Decade', or so the Daily Prophet calls it. But I don't care about anyone else, or what they think.

It's my wedding.

Okay, our wedding.

Harry James and Ginevra Molly Potter.

Yes, I like the sound of that.

Hermione's
fussing over her train. It's her wedding day as well, and we're being
each other's maids of honour. It's a lot of fuss, but we wouldn't have
it any other way. Ron and Harry are serving as each other's Best Man.
Fred and George are under orders to make sure that Minister Doge
doesn't marry the wrong couples, because I don't think that any of us
are going to be completely calm and rational this afternoon and much as
I love my brother, I don't fancy being married to him for the rest of
my life. When the Minister says "I now pronounce you…" I want to be
very sure that the person I'm marrying is Harry.

After all, it took some doing to get this far...

*

A
few months ago, there had been a family get together, and as always,
the twins had dragged Harry and our brothers off to the back garden for
Quidditch. Us girls had gathered in the parlour, with Penelope showing
off her engagement ring.

"It's about time," Angelina snorted. "You've been with him longer than any of us."

"Well,
Percy likes to be sure," Penelope had said. I smiled. Her patience had
finally won out. She had broken up with Percy after he had turned his
back on the family, and it had been two years before he'd dared seek
her out again. She had given him the strength, I knew, to come back to
us, repairing the gap in our family and supplying me with amazing
strength when Harry had been injured in the final battle.

Even
so, he and Penny had been together for, what, six years? And that's not
even counting the two years that they'd spent apart, or the nearly
three years that they'd spent together before that.

As Angelina said, it was about time.

So where did that leave Hermione and I?

We'd exchanged rueful glances at Angelina's words, and both knew what the other was thinking.

What about us?

You
have to understand, I'm not my mother. I don't want to settle down and
pump out babies, and I'd go mad if I had to stop working for Gringotts.
Bill had just given me my own team to lead, and two weeks beforehand
we'd broken into Iry-Hor's second chamber. That's the furthest anyone'd
ever got in a pre-dynastic tomb, and okay, two of my men got Splinched, but not fatally. We'd be back, and better, too.

I couldn't give up curse breaking, not even for Harry. I love my life too much.

But
being out of the country six weeks in twelve puts pressure on a
relationship. I know that there are times when Harry doesn't want me to
go back to Egypt, and even when I am in England, if he has an away
match we still don't get to see each other very much.

But we loved each other, and that'd always been enough.

Until now.

I
felt so horrible, thinking this way. I know that I could have asked
Harry to marry me, but I had to know that it's something that he wanted
to do, not something that he'd do to keep me. He loves me, I knew that
well enough, but I also knew that we'd been together since I was
fifteen, many years before. It's stupid, because I wasn't exactly
knocking on death's door, but I knew that I wanted to be married to
Harry.

And the sooner the better.

Still, things
weren't as bad as they could have been. Both Hermione's flat and Ron
and Harry's flat have telephones, and if someone - we'll say for the
sake of argument Ron - should happen to be on the phone to someone else
- we'll say for the sake of argument Harry - and if they happen to be
discussing something important - we'll say for the sake of argument
'popping the question' - then a certain someone standing in just the
right place - exactly halfway between the kitchen and the living room,
where the noise from the coffee percolator is quiet enough, and the
listener can't be seen by anyone in the living room - can hear entire
conversations.

Anyway.

I told Hermione, and fortunately her percolator is loud.
Loud enough to mask her hyperventilating and her squeals. For all that
she's cool and calm and smart enough to make Merlin break his wand in
two, Hermione's still a witch in love, and just as susceptible to going
weak at the knees as anyone else.

Including me, but I think I managed to hide it.

*

A week or so later, I stared at Harry in disbelief.

"You want us to go away together?" I echoed.

"Yeah,
what do you think?" he asked. "We never get any real time together, but
once the season's over, I know you've got a few weeks off, and there's
no internationals on, so I can get away as well."

"Er..."

"It's
okay," he said, smiling softly at me. "I know money's tight, so you
don't have to answer me right away. Maybe you can talk to Hermione
about it? Ron thought that it was such a good idea that he's going to
pop the question to her as well."

"Oh."

I looked around the restaurant, which was far more expensive then we could normally manage.

He bought me here to ask me to go on holiday with him? Bloody man!

It took all the self-control that I could muster to manage it, but I forced a smile onto my face.

"A holiday sounds great," I said. "Do you have any idea where you'd like to go?"

"Well,
not Egypt," he said, smiling. "I think you've probably seen enough of
that place. Aren't you always saying that the sand gets everywhere?"

I nodded. My smile had become quite fixed at this point, but Harry didn't seem to have noticed.

I nodded absently. I do like mountains, but did he really ask me here to see if I wanted to go on holiday?

I sighed, not thinking.

"Ginny?"

Oh... damn.

"Is something wrong?"

Those
amazing eyes of his were filled with concern. Harry learned the hard
way that I can take care of myself, and don't appreciate
over-protectiveness in friends, family or boyfriends, but his first
instinct is still to take care of me, regardless of how much I may or
may not want or need it.

"I'm fine," I said. "Just happy to have such a wonderful boyfriend."

That, Ginny Weasley, was pathetic. Even Harry didn't buy it, and he's never been the most perceptive man in the world.

The
conversation moved away from the shark-infested waters and onto more
mundane topics. Harry's back was feeling much better after falling from
his broom weeks before in a vain attempt to catch the Snitch. Oliver
Wood had been forced to publicly suspend him for the reckless act, but
his tacit approval had resulted in a suspension that had run out
already, a full week before Harry was due to return to training.

I
found myself itching to return to Hermione's flat and the couch that I
slept on whenever I was in England and not at Harry's. It seemed as
though the best thing right now was for me to head back there and have
a serious think. If Ron was putting his foot in it with Hermione as
badly as I suspected, she'd need to have me there so that we could
complain to each other about our stupid, ignorant boyfriends.

Harry
finished paying for our meal and stood up, holding out my coat for me.
I slipped gratefully into it, for the restaurant wasn't very well
heated. Harry hadn't seemed to notice, although being a man he gets to
wear formal robes with sleeves, and any number of jumpers underneath.
Women today are expected to wear Muggle-inspired robes with no sleeves
or backs, and not a great deal of front, either. I can't even borrow
something from Hermione. She's always had a lot more up front then I
do, which is probably one of the reasons that Ron always seems so happy.

So, I thought, as I pulled my coat around me. I'd spent good money on a beautiful new dress to be asked to go to Canada.

I
suppose I could have taken it as a sign that Harry was committed to our
relationship, that he was ready to plan months in advance - for the end
of the Quidditch season wasn't until June, and it was only January, but
for some reason the 'silver lining' part of my personality wasn't
really working. By the time we got outside the restaurant, I knew that
I was going to have to go home.

"Harry, I'm not feeling very well," I lied as he looked for a taxi to flag down.

"Oh, okay," he said. "Shall we go back to the flat, then?"

"No," I said, feeling a little bad for lying to him. "I'm just tired, and, well, it's that time of the month anyway, so..."

I
left the sentence dangling. Wonderful boyfriend though he is, Harry
refuses to acknowledge periods as anything other than an American
punctuation mark. He certainly doesn't keep track of when I might be
approaching that part of my cycle.

It can be very handy at
times, although I try not to overuse it. I once overheard Seamus
telling Ron that Lavender had declared herself 'off limits' for a month
when she had been upset at him. It took Seamus a month to
notice, and he's supposed to be quite enlightened about this sort of
thing. Harry would probably happily accept my menstrual cycle as an
excuse for at least three months before he dared question me.

But I'm getting off topic here, aren't I?

Harry
looked disappointed, and I certainly knew how he felt. After three
months in Egypt, I'd returned for one wonderful night before Harry was
dragged off by Puddlemere for three successive away games, and as
Oliver Wood bans lovers and spouses from visiting his players before
matches, I knew that Harry had been looking forward to spending the
night together.

Somehow, I wasn't in the mood.

Instead,
I watched as Harry got into the taxi - he has this strange fondness for
Muggle transport - and then I walked to the nearest Apparition point.
One or two people looked at me curiously a young woman on her own
strolling blithely down a dark alley, but I was hardly defenceless. I
sighed deeply as I drew my wand, and with a twist of my wrist, I
Disapparated.

*

My mind reeling, I stumbled against
the foot stool that sat in the middle of Hermione's living room,
realising as I did so that A: It wasn't normally there, and B:
something heavy was on top of it, like someone's feet.

Someone was sitting in the dark, apparently waiting for Hermione to come home.

This someone was already moving, and even as I began to bring my wand.

"It's about time you got here," the deep voice rumbled as he clambered to his feet.

My mind was blank as the shadowy figure moved, his hand going to his pocket.

"I've wanted to do this a long time."

The only spell that came to mind was Lumos. I thought that I could at least dazzle my opponent.

The figure spoke as I muttered the charm. "Hermione, will you ma-"

We
stared at each other in amazement as the bright light from my wand
defracted through the diamonds on the ring he held in his hand.

"Ginny," Ron gaped in surprise. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?"